He’s changing.  You can start to see his little intellect emerging from the haze of emotion that clouded the first three months.  He’s a curious child, he can be amused with the right trick or maneuver.  Which means that you can keep him quiet, but it actually takes work.  Not physical work, not patting and cooing and bouncing.  Now the work has become observation and imagination and pattern formation.

Two months ago you did what you could to calm him, but you didn’t take failure personally.  He was just a ball of emotion, so it wasn’t your fault.  He got upset by hunger and temperature and bowel rumbles.  Nothing to do with you.

But nowadays the toolbox of calming techniques is bigger, and using it requires a more subtle hand.  For example, Elliot always used to want to be held.  That was a given.  If you could get away with putting him down, congratulations, but it wasn’t the norm.  That’s not the case anymore.  Now sometimes he’ll cry in my arms but suck happily on his fist in his bassinet, staring up at his mobile.  

The machinery has gotten more complex, gone from lawn mower to V6 engine.  So maintenance becomes more complex too, as well as the diagnostic acumen required. 

Not sure what the point of these observations are.  But isn’t that one of the prerogatives of the blogger: aimlessness?